Yaow: that's ma nigga!

If almost anybody else had said this, I might have thought it was intended as a fairly well-concealed joke, but I’ve been watching Al Sharpton for too long to give him that benefit of the doubt.

Below is a steaming pile of audio from Sharpton’s radio show on which Al said that in Somalia they refer to the pirates â€” the same ones that were holding guns to the heads of Americans and others, andÂ continue to stage attacks â€” as a “voluntary Coast Guard.” This would have been a little like callingÂ David Berkowitz a member of the “volunteer fire department” or referring to Al Sharpton as a “legitimate reverend”:

Tune in tomorrow to the Reverend Sharpton Show to hear Al accuse the Navy SEALS who shot three members of the Somalian Coast Guard ofÂ raping a stripper!

Magic Negro has a problem with “Privacy”

Philosophical memo of the day:

Ayn Rand writes in (Atlas Shrugged):

A being who does not know automatically what is true or false, cannot know automatically what is right or wrong, what is good for him or evil. Yet he needs Â that knowledge in order to live. He is not exempt from the laws of reality.

Back to ‘mah nigga’

The Reverend Al Sharpton of New York â€“ a radio commentator, self-proclaimed minister, political gadfly & professional Negro â€“ has now proclaimed that the Somali pirates are not pirates at all, but volunteer Somali coast guards attempting to counter invasion of their waters by non-transit-tax-paying international vessels.

The most ridiculous of the second guesses is that these were not pirates at all, but socially responsible defenders of the Somali people. The Rev. Al Sharpton invited his radio listeners to call and talk about “the so-called pirates. They call themselves voluntary Coast Guards in Somalia, which may be more apt.” Rapper K’naan, who says some of his cousins are pirates, told Angela Yee on “The Morning After” radio show that the buccaneers started out as a defence force stopping large corporations from dumping “nuclear toxic-waste containers” in Somali waters and that the ransoms were merely reparations for corporate misconduct.

In other words, the pirates are community activists.

* Damn. Where did I hear that before?

The biggest niggas in New york!

From the archive: US rages at black activists over Klan rape ‘hoax’

June 19, 1988: the fallout from an alleged attack on a teenage girl is turning ever more toxic

THE Tawana Brawley affair, a bizarre New York rape story that developed into a highly charged racial drama, exploded onto front pages and television screens across the United States this weekend, after allegations that the whole saga was a politically inspired hoax.

Three controversial black activists, who transformed the alleged rape of a black schoolgirl into a political crusade, face investigation into whether they deliberately misled prosecutors.

The main figures in the case started as unknowns and are now national celebrities. In the past few days they have appeared on the top television chat show and leading nightly news programmes.

The drama began last November when Tawana, a 16-year-old black schoolgirl, was found in a rubbish bag outside her mother’s former home in Wappinger Falls, upstate New York.

She was covered in excreta and had racist slogans, including “KKK” and “nigger”, daubed on her body. Tawana was reluctant to talk but she indicated that she had been abducted by four white men, then raped and assaulted.

The police, however, could find little evidence. Medical tests showed no sign of rape and Tawana refused to co-operate. Teenagers claimed to have seen her at a party when she was supposed to be missing and a witness said that she saw Tawana crawl into the bag herself.

In January, Alton Maddox and Vernon Mason, two New York lawyers who specialise in cases involving inter-racial violence, took over the case.

Maddox said the white authorities had conspired in a cover-up to protect Tawana’s attackers, whom he named as a local prosecutor, a part-time policeman and a state trooper.

The lawyers’ attack was spearheaded by the Rev Al Sharpton, a Baptist preacher who has quickly become one of the most controversial figures in America. Sharpton has kept the Brawley case on the front pages with ever more outlandish statements.

He has compared the prosecutor to Adolf Hitler, suggested the IRA, the Ku Klux Klan and the mafia were involved in the rape, and compared Mario Cuomo, New York’s liberal governor, to the bigoted southern governors of the civil rights era.

The case took another dramatic turn when the prosecutors subpoenaed Tawana’s mother to appear before a grand jury investigating the charges.

On the advice of her lawyers she refused to co-operate. A New York judge found her in contempt of court and ordered that she be jailed for 30 days.

The sentence caused an uproar in New York’s black community. When it appeared that an innocent black woman, the victim’s mother, would be the first to go to jail, many blacks rallied behind Sharpton, Mason and Maddox.

In another brilliant media ploy, Sharpton announced that the mother would seek sanctuary in a black church. He dared Cuomo to try to arrest her there. The governor, aware that such a move could spark a race riot in the heatwave, rejected the bait.

Late last week a bombshell hit the Brawley camp. A former aide to Sharpton said that Tawana’s story was “nothing but a pack of lies”.

Perry McKinnon, a black Vietnam veteran and former policeman, said her “advisers” had doubts about the story, but decided to exploit it anyway.

“The story does sound like bullshit, but it doesn’t matter,” McKinnon quoted Sharpton as saying. “We’re building a movement. This is because you’ve got whites on blacks. That’s an easy way to stir up all the deprived people.”

McKinnon also quoted Sharpton as saying: “If we can win this Tawana thing, we will be the biggest niggers in New York.”

McKinnon’s statements caused a national uproar. In the Bethany Baptist church in Brooklyn, which had been converted into a makeshift television studio, the three advisers and Tawana’s mother appeared live on the Phil Donahue chat show, one of the most popular programmes on American television.

Sharpton branded McKinnon a “bald-faced liar” and told the millions of people watching that New York was “a corrupt and racist state”.

Hundreds of black supporters cheered Sharpton, chanting: “No peace; no justice” and “Cuomo, Cuomo, have you heard? This is not Johannesburg”.

The rape case is now heading nowhere. Without co-operation from Tawana and her mother, the prosecutors have hinted that they will soon end their inquiries. The state attorney-general is looking at whether Sharpton, Maddox and Mason “have been perpetrating a hoax, not only on the black community, but on all the people of the state of New York”.

A grand jury found Tawana’s allegations were false. Tawana, who changed her name and converted to Islam, now works as a nurse. Sharpton, who ran unsuccessfully as mayor of New York in 1997, is one of America’s best-known activists